Optical switches have been used heretofore as devices for selectively connecting a small number of optical fibers to a large number of optical fibers in line connection tests, circuit tests, etc. in optical fiber communication lines.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,446,810 discloses an optical switch having an optical fiber arranging member of a flat plate shape in which a plurality of optical fiber fixing grooves for optical fibers to be placed therein are formed in parallel on a flat plate. This optical switch is constructed in such structure that array-side optical fibers are placed in the respective fiber fixing grooves of the optical fiber arranging member and that a carrying mechanism moves a moving-side optical fiber to selectively connect the moving-side optical fiber to an array-side optical fiber.
The optical switch provided with the optical fiber arranging member as described in the above USP, however, had the following problems. For arranging a number of optical fibers in the structure wherein the optical fiber fixing grooves for the optical fibers to be placed therein were formed in parallel on the flat plate as described above, the size of the optical fiber arranging member had to be increased. Further, the moving-side optical fiber needed to be translationally moved by use of expensive ball screw, linear guide, and so on in order to selectively connect the moving-side optical fiber to either of the array-side optical fibers arrayed in parallel, and there arose problems of high cost and complexity of the carrying mechanism with increase in the size of the optical fiber arranging member.
In the optical switch described in the above U.S. Pat. No. 5,446,810, a plurality of optical fiber arranging members are arranged vertically in order to decrease the size in the optical fiber array direction of the optical fiber arranging members. This structure, however, necessitates a mechanism for moving the moving-side optical fiber in the vertical direction in order to selectively connect the moving-side optical fiber to either of the array-side optical fibers, which makes the carrying mechanism of the moving-side optical fiber more complex.